Recognize and Heal From Covert Abuse with Helena Knowlton
//We’ve all crossed paths with manipulative people who seem great on the surface but who actually undermine others. Helena Knowlton of Confusion to Clarity Now and the Arise Healing Community joins us today to talk about covert abuse, covert abusers, and how a correct understanding of trauma’s impact is vital to healing.
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Transcript
Hey there! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have with me Helena Knowlton who is the author of the website Confusion to Clarity Now. She’s the founder of Confusion to Clarity Facebook Community for survivors of covert psychological abuse and creator and leader of the Arise Healing Community.
Helena, it is so lovely to have you here on the Voice of Influence podcast.
Helena Knowlton: Thank you, Andrea, I’m really happy to be here.
Andrea: Could you tell us a little bit more about your communities, the kind of healing work and helping work that you’re doing?
Helena Knowlton: Sure. I have a website that’s very information based to help women start recognizing abuse and start learning different steps that they can take, because psychological abuse can be very, very, very hard to identify right off the bat. And then my Facebook community is huge, it’s thriving. The women are so supportive and loving with one another to help each other really get a lot of clarity so they can see what’s going on in their life and start making decisions for themselves.
And then I also have my Arise Healing Community, which is a trauma-informed, healing-based community for women who either are still in the abuse and can’t get out yet or are not sure if they are ready to leave, but they want to start working on how the trauma of the abuse has affected them, and for women who are free from the abuse and are ready to do some really deep healing from the trauma.
Andrea: There’s so much important work that you’re doing. What led you to the point where you started these groups and this work?
Helena Knowlton: Well, I was very severely abused as a child myself and was pretty unstable for most of my life. And then I married a covert abuser, which I’ll get into in a little bit, a psychological abuser. And I spent 10 years of that 26-year relationship, sick in bed with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and chemical sensitivities. I did get better from that; then we got involved in a Christian cult. So that was another abusive experience, very fear-based, controlling-based, cult-type church. And so, then I started realizing, finally, that I was being abused.
And so, after the divorce, I was okay for about two years, and then my body completely collapsed on me, and I almost died. And I ended up with chronic leukemia and ulcerative colitis, and that’s what almost killed me. So, after spending a year in bed dying – I mean, literally – I went to a naturopath, and he said to me, “What happened to you as a child or in your life that your body just wants to die?” And so, of course, I was just in tears. He was an amazing man. He spent three hours with me. Can you imagine a doctor spending three hours with a patient?
And he started teaching me about trauma and how the trauma was affecting my body. And he started directing me towards therapies that I could use to heal. So, during this time, I really had always wanted to help other women understand what psychological covert abuse is because it was such a long journey for me.
Andrea: Sure.
Helena Knowlton: And there was very little support back out there in the internet. There’s just like one book, really. And I had to get my health back in order to help. So, I spent three years doing trauma therapy using EMDR, which is a very powerful trauma processing therapy that resolves the trauma. And I started really getting completely healed emotionally and mentally. I’m still working on the physical stuff, still actually, doing EMDR about the health trauma that I still have – I have great hope for that too.
So, anyway, once I realized how the trauma had affected me and how much I needed to do that healing, I started my own website about, first introducing women to psychological abuse and helping them recognize it, and then I knew I had to start helping women find the trauma-based healing.
Andrea: Wow. That’s quite a story.
Helena Knowlton: Yeah. But you know what, I don’t have any regrets because I’m so healed and so full of joy about what I get to do with my life now, that it’s really okay.
Andrea: Wow, wow! That’s a huge statement, to be full of joy and to see that kind of redemption in your own life.
Helena Knowlton: Yeah, that’s what trauma healing does. It’s very powerful.
Andrea: Hmm. So, let’s start with trauma. When you say trauma healing, what are you referring to?
Helena Knowlton: Well, what I’m referring to is the way that the abuse affects us. Not only mentally, which most people think about and deal with, but physiologically. Because, you know, we do have to understand the lies that we’ve been believing that have kept us trapped in abuse to get free from the abuse. But we also need to see how our whole body has been affected by the trauma because trauma changes our nervous system in our brain on a physiological level. And because of those changes, it gets very hard to make decisions; and it’s very hard to heal without addressing that level.
So, trauma causes symptoms like anxiety and depression, or feeling numb, feeling disconnected, you know, from yourself, from other people, and from God. Feeling hopeless, really getting easily triggered by little things that happen in your life. Just really at a foundational level not trusting yourself. Feeling really afraid of your feelings because they are so overwhelming and kind of feeling chronically unsafe in your whole life.
And so because trauma causes this chronic feeling of not feeling in charge of yourself, because you feel out of control of your feelings, you feel out of control of your thoughts, and you’ve lost touch with yourself, and your voice, and your needs and who you really are, it can lead to, you know, serious health problems as well. We need to understand where that’s coming from so we can heal. And we need to know that these symptoms are being caused by our body and our brain that’s been dysregulated by the trauma.
And you see what happens, trauma causes our nervous system to get stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or faun. Now, these were originally designed, you know, physiologically to survive a one-time scary thing like, you know, you almost get hit by a car, right? But what happens is when you’re being abused consistently over a long period of time, that survival mechanism gets stuck on, and you can’t turn it off.
And so, you feel like you’re on this runaway train physiologically, where you’re always anxious, you’re always numb, or you’re switching between the two or, you know, you are not really just calm, and centered, and truly yourself. And so, trauma leaves us feeling like we aren’t in control of our emotions, our thoughts, or our responses to everyday life. It’s like our nervous system has become this TSA agent, and every person is a potential terrorist. And that’s a horrible way to live.
Andrea: That’s so true, though.
Helena Knowlton: Yeah. And so, also, trauma affects our thinking brain, because our brain gets dysregulated. And when you start understanding that you can start saying, “Oh, it’s not me. This isn’t a character flaw. This isn’t a sin. This isn’t a weakness. This is actually a physiological event that’s going on in my body.” Because our thinking brain, you know, the decision-making part of our brain gets very underactive as a result of trauma. And the effects on our nervous system, the emotional regulation isn’t working, the alarm system is on high, so we respond to everyday life in ways that are not the way we want to be.
And also the filtering system in our brain isn’t functioning, so we can’t really start distinguishing what’s relevant, what’s not. You know, like a vet who hears a car backfire and thinks, that startle response and terror response. Trauma survivors who went through abuse are going through that on a physiological level as well, so it makes it very hard to engage in the present.
And, also, the part of our brain that’s the way that we experience ourselves in the world gets blunted, so we become disconnected from our own experience of life. And this just steals who we are from ourselves. And then the speech center is also blunted, so we can hardly even explain what’s going on. And when you add that to the psychological abuse, you have a double whammy there. Now, interestingly, the part of the speech center that brings up four-letter words is very active still.
Andrea: Oh, my gosh, that’s so funny.
Helena Knowlton: Isn’t that funny? I know, you find yourself swearing all the time, because that’s the best part of the speech center that’s working. So, all this dysregulation in our brain and in our nervous system, it also causes dysregulation in our body chemistry and the connections between parts of our brain are working. And so, really, we are left with a body that’s not functioning the way we want it to, and it’s hard to sort out our feelings. It’s hard to make decisions. It’s hard to change our thoughts. It’s hard to see options. And this is all based in our physiology, not because there’s something wrong with us.
And then also, the timekeeper in our brain goes offline. So, we think, “This is never gonna end, this is never gonna end, this is never gonna end.” And that just breeds more and more hopelessness. So, what I try to do is I help women understand what’s going on in their body so they understand that feeling emotionally unstable is not who they are – it’s what’s happened to them – and that their sense of self has been damaged on a physiological level.
Andrea: You know, all this trauma that you’re talking about and you’re talking about the physical body, and yet, you’re actually working with people who have experienced covert abuse. So, can you explain a little bit more about what covert abuse is, what it looks like in contrast to what probably most people think of as physical abuse?
Helena Knowlton: Yeah. I sure can. I think most people when they think of abuse, they think of either, you know, screaming and yelling or the image of the black and blue woman, you know, cowering in the corner. Well, their abuse is a much broader event than that, you know, that’s overt abuse. But the women I work with are being both abused with covert tactics and being abused by a covert abuser. So, I’ll talk about the tactics, and then I’ll talk about what a covert abuser is.
So, the tactics are the psychological tactics, the gaslighting, where they deny that they’ve done something. They move your keys, so you think you’re going crazy. You know, they’re always changing reality, so you’re doubting what you’re experiencing. And there’s, you know, the secret mind games, there’s brainwashing, and this is all to manipulate our mind and emotions. So, we lose reality and our sense of self. There’s like blame shifting, “I didn’t do that; you did that. That was your fault. Why did you react that way? It didn’t happen that way. It happened this way.” They’re rewriting history.
There’s confusing conversations that they just go nowhere. They get off-track, or they just feel like a competition, or the abuser playing the victim: “Well, you did this to me,” and, you know, that kind of stuff. And also, covert tactics can be a body language that doesn’t match the words because we pick up on body language. Body language is a very large part of our communication. So, if there’s contempt or anger – I work with women, so married women – on the husband’s face but his words are being kind. That is giving a very subtle crazy-making message.
And then we react because we’re confused, and we might get angry. We’re frustrated, and then he’ll come in and say, “Wow, you are so oversensitive. You’re so paranoid. That’s not normal. Why are you reacting that way? I didn’t say anything wrong.” So, it’s very, very manipulative psychologically. And the whole point of this kind of abuse is to get us to doubt ourselves in our perceptions. So, we’ll take on his narrative of what’s going on, who he is, what’s happening in the marriage in his narrative about us and who we are. So, that’s how we really begin to lose our sense of self.
So, a lot of overt abusers, like the yellers and the hitters, they will use covert tactics as well in order to truly manipulate their victim. And I’ll tell you, women who have been, you know, hit will tell you that it was the psychological mind game tactics that were actually more damaging to them, because you heal from a bruise, hopefully, you can heal from that. But the mind games just erode who you are so deeply. So, the tactics can be covert, you know, whether you’re being hit or not.
But then there are some abusers who only use covert tactics. That’s what we call the covert abuser. So, they don’t ever raise their voice, or they rarely would raise their voice. They never raise their hand, but they are abusing. And they’re cloaking these tactics, these mind games in concern, in love, in charm, in praise, and fake empathy, and appearing like they’re being trustworthy. And they smile and they pretend to be, you know, like your biggest supporter. And these are the very subtle, dangerous, and insidious psychological abusers.
And, you know, with them, the tactics are so under the radar and so subtle, but they’re so directed really specifically at our own insecurities and our own perceived weaknesses. It’s like, you know, a mole going way underground to just destroy us. And we don’t see what’s going on because we see what he presents. We see that he loves us, and he’s this caring person.
So, we doubt ourselves, we doubt our experience, we doubt our reality, we doubt our perceptions, we doubt our thoughts and our judgments and our abilities, and we feel paranoid and oversensitive. And we think there’s something wrong with us and we don’t know what we’re defending ourselves against because it’s invisible and hard to identify. So, we really lose our inner world, our sense of self, our reality, and our voice.
And this is the hardest kind of abuse to figure out, which is why my website goes into great detail about how to tell, because oftentimes the only way to tell is how you’re reacting. And so, we have to start to learn to trust our own reactions and know if, I’m feeling confused, there is something going on because in a healthy marriage, your partner isn’t confusing you.
Andrea: You know, I was about to ask until you said that, I was about to ask what it looks like. Maybe even you could share an example of what this loving, you know, empathetic – it seems – and caring person, what they could be saying that could look one way but totally have a different effect?
Helena Knowlton: I can. First, I want to say I read so many books on abuse when I was trying to figure out what’s going on in my marriage, and none of them were talking about this kind of abuse. So, it kept me trapped for longer.
Andrea: Wow!
Helena Knowlton: I would read, you know, yelling or telling you where you can go or controlling the money. What’s going on? So, I kept thinking, “Well, then I’m not being abused. It really must be me.” And, also, on my website, I have a free pdf download about how to identify if you’re experiencing abuse, it’s very complete. It’s all about your inner experience.
And also, I have a thing on tactics so you can start understanding how to analyze a conversation that’s going on and say, “Oh, he just changed the topic. He just deflected. He just switched everything around so that I got blamed for something that he did.” “Oh, look at that, now he just said that he cared about me, but the look on his face is one of contempt.”
And I show pictures of what those fake facial expressions look like, to really be a detective.
But I can tell you some examples. For instance, a covert abuser, like let’s say you’re interested in learning something new and so, he says, “Oh, that’s great, I know about that. Let me help you.” And then you start to feel like you are actually really incompetent. And you could, actually, never learn this new thing because as he’s talking with you about it, he’s subtly doing things to undermine your confidence. Like if you put forth a thought he’d go, “Well, but, you know, most people think bla bla, bla, bla,” or “Well, you know, I’m really not sure that that would actually work.”
But there’s so much more going on, because he’s really targeting your perceived weaknesses and your insecurities. Or you might bring up an issue in the relationship, and he’ll respond with this very fake empathy towards you and you know fake, “I’m sorry.” He might even give you some crocodile tears. And then he’ll act like he’s changed for just a little while just to get your guard down again, so that he can then take you into another abuse psychological crazy event. So, it’s hard to explain, because it’s all very, very subtle. But I can tell you that women who are experiencing it will go “Oh, I know exactly what you’re talking about; that happened last night.”
Andrea: Yeah. Wow!
Helena Knowlton: So, there’s a proverb that says, “Even the compassion of the wicked is cruel.” That just expresses it because the compassion, the caring, the concern is fake. It has an agenda behind it, which is to get you to trust so he can pull the rug out from under you again.
Andrea: Wow! So, since covert abuse really seems to be benign and sometimes deceptively loving, how does it really differ from healthy influence? So, we’re still wanting to have some influence but not wanting to be covertly abusive, you know, how do we determine or distinguish between the two?
Helena Knowlton: Well, healthy love and healthy influence has the need of the person you’re with in the forefront. So, you’re trying to help somebody grow and blossom and become who they are and know who they are.
Andrea: Not just say so.
Helena Knowlton: Not just say so, but actually mean it. Yeah, you know, like a healthy person will gain trust by being genuine, by being vulnerable, by being emotionally open, and by listening, because they want to develop a good relationship with you. So, an unhealthy person, a covert abuser will pretend to do these same things to gain your trust. So, they might mirror your interests, mirror your values, appear to be like your soulmate, appear to be concerned about you to get information about you so they can start making you feel crazy about yourself.
So, really, the best way to tell is how you feel in that interaction. I mean, there’s other signs, and they’re all in the guide that I have. But, if you start to feel a little bit odd, a little bit off, a little bit doubting yourself, a little bit confused, then you’ve begun an interaction where somebody is actually using you rather than really putting your needs and your interests on the table as what’s mattering.
Andrea: Hmm. You know, I would think that it would be really difficult to trust that sense of what’s going on inside of me, my inner voice, if you will, when that’s being questioned all the time. So, how can people around me, around the person who’s in this situation, how can those people help them find that inner voice trusted, rather than contributing really to the covert abuse by telling them that they actually, you know, don’t know what they’re talking about? It seems like that happens more often than not.
Helena Knowlton: Yeah. Well, one thing is people have to understand that there really are these kinds of diabolical people out there who are having a different agenda than what we do. So, we have to understand that not everybody is like us . You know – very kind, compassionate, loving people – we have to understand there are people out there who are not like that. They have a completely different agenda. So, in terms of helping somebody else, you know, believe them. I mean, it’s hard when you don’t even know that this is going on. So, you know, I don’t know how to educate the entire world on this topic. If I did, I’d be doing that.
Andrea: One podcast at a time.
Helena Knowlton: One podcast at a time, exactly. One podcast at a time, one article at a time. Yeah. And I won’t even get into what we need to do in the church to stop the church from abusing women and silencing women because that goes on every single day, all day long. So, as far as helping somebody else, we need to understand that there are people out there who are not like us. And as far as helping ourselves, get our own intuition and trusting ourselves back, trauma healing really, really helps with that, because we develop coping mechanisms and ways of reacting to people in our world based on what we’ve been through in our own trauma.
So, if we are coming out of our childhood with dysfunction and all that, we aren’t going to be as clear when we’re dealing with people in the world. But, you know, I can pretty much pick up when somebody is trustworthy or not now because I don’t doubt myself anymore. And, you know, that’s the thing is not doubting yourself, and it takes a lot of work to get there, takes a lot of rebuilding trust in yourself. But, you know, one thing I talk about is the traits that we have that make us vulnerable to trusting other people who are not trustworthy because they’re using our good traits against us.
So, we need to start being aware that we are over trusting, that we are over loyal, that we are, you know, all these good things and we need to kind of notch them back a little bit when we’re meeting new people and say, “Okay, I’m not going to operate out of these really positive, great traits, I’m gonna be a little bit more self-protective.”
Andrea: Helena, your health was seriously impacted by the abuse that you experienced, as you shared a little bit ago. How did learning about those physical impacts of trauma change the way that you dealt with abuse?
Helena Knowlton: It changed in every way. Absolutely, in every way. So I told you my story, about, you know, what happened to me, and I started realizing that we really do need to have much more trauma-informed help out there for women who are coming out of abuse, because I tell you, the women in my groups, so many of them are dealing with health issues. It’s a very, very high percentage, and so I learned as much as I could. I became a trauma-informed coach first, and pretty much everything I do now is trauma-informed because that’s how we start to undo the physiology in our body.
You know, in some cases, the horses might be out of the barn, and you might not be able to fully heal physically of health issues. You can heal physiologically of the trauma where your nervous system has calmed down, your brain is functioning well again. But, you know, if you have an autoimmune disorder, that’s something I don’t deal with, you know, in helping women because that’s way beyond my knowledge base.
So, how it really changed is me dealing with trauma directly in the work that I do and developing the Arise program so that women can learn tools. Because in Arise, I’m really helping them understand what’s going on in their body, letting them know they’re not crazy. They don’t have a character flaw. When women understand what’s going on physiologically, they can start to have compassion on their experience and on who they are instead of fighting with themselves all the time.
And that alone helps to calm down your whole nervous system. So, self-compassion is huge and that comes with understanding. Then I also have learned a ton of trauma-based tools that really work on our physiology to help us change how we react in the world and to begin to gain a sense of empowerment over our actual self. So, we aren’t triggered as much, and we know how to respond when something difficult happens. That’s developing self-leadership and self-agency.
And when we do it from a trauma-based perspective, it’s so much faster. Because our brain is not working very well, cognitive therapy, which is a very common model out there can almost be more harmful sometimes than helpful. Cognitive therapy, which is understanding lies and your belief systems and the thoughts that you’re having, can be really good for getting out of abuse for seeing what’s going on.
But for healing, we really need to be working with our physiology. Because the stuff we’re dealing with after abuse, shame, false guilt, self-doubt, grief, and all the spiritual abuse that we’ve been through and betrayal trauma and not having boundaries; a lot of these things, you know, all this affecting our bodies, our minds, our emotions. A lot of it is originating in our physiology.
So, to regain our self, and our voice, and our power, we need to regain control over our physiology. And I don’t mean control as in, “I’m gonna control you.” I mean, as in, “Oh, I know what to do now with the way I’m responding.”
Andrea: It’s just reminding me about my personal experience, which wasn’t abuse, it was sort of a traumatic experience with my childbirth with my son. But after that for quite a while, a couple of years, I was very sensitive and overwhelmed easily. I wasn’t getting much sleep anyway. And I remember there being a point at which I realized that this wasn’t my fault. Actually, I just need sleep. It wasn’t me as this depraved, sinful, horrible person that is getting angry at my children or whatever. But that it was: “Oh, I am so tired. I feel like there are pins and needles sticking me from the inside, and I’m physically struggling. I need sleep.” And it just finally hit me that it wasn’t my fault. And so, it sounds similar to what you’re talking about.
Helena Knowlton: That’s a great metaphor, analogy, whatever you want to call it, yes. I mean, I think we all know how we feel cuckoo when we don’t get enough sleep. And that’s the same kookiness we’re feeling when our body is physiologically completely dysregulated from trauma. That’s a great, great example.
Andrea: And I think finding my voice again had a lot to do with the physical healing, just the physical getting more sleep, but then also getting, you know, just taking care of myself in so many different ways. And so, I guess I feel like I can relate to what you’re talking about, even though it wasn’t covert abuse or something like that, but it’s still trauma of its own kind or whatever.
Helena Knowlton: A part of healing trauma is having the experience repeatedly of somebody safe being with you in your pain. We don’t see that happening very often in our world. People really like to talk about pain or solve pain. But when I’m coaching or being with women in Arise, I can be with them in their pain in a very calm way. And that gives them the experience of safety because I don’t get triggered by their stories because I’ve healed myself.
And so, this is a way that we can really express love in the most healing form of being a calm presence and giving somebody who’s traumatized the experience, in real life, of safety. And that, actually, starts to help their nervous system calm down. It would be like you getting an amazing eight hours of sleep.
Andrea: Well, I also had to have that experience as well, though, to be able to process what I had been through and what I had experienced because I was having weird-like symptoms after leaving the hospital and things. There were those moments that I would just want to crumble up into a little ball and not talk to anybody and just protect myself. So, there was still that moment where I had to be with somebody else who, like you said, wasn’t threatened by it, wasn’t triggered by it, but could just listen because I couldn’t handle having any of my stuff affect somebody else. I couldn’t handle that, that was too much. I couldn’t handle their reaction too.
Helena Knowlton: Exactly.
Andrea: So, I can relate, yeah.
Helena Knowlton: Yep.
Andrea: Helena, what common mistakes or misconceptions do you see really take place with people who don’t understand that impact of trauma on survivors?
Helena Knowlton: Well, this is a great question. You know, the most common model out there for healing and helpers to use is cognitive therapy. That’s all just based on your thinking. And the foundation of cognitive therapy is that your beliefs or your thoughts are what is creating your feelings. Well, this is a very old, old therapy model formed in the 60s. And in the last 30 years, there’s been so much research on trauma. And that research has shown with brain scans and all sorts of other scientific, you know, methodology, that that is not the whole picture.
Many, if not most, of our really distressing feelings are originating in our traumatized nervous system and brain. So, the cognitive model is very incomplete and very ineffective for treating trauma, and that’s been proven. I can give you some coping mechanisms, but it’s not going to heal you. So, when women are being told that their thoughts and their beliefs are causing their feelings, they’re not being given what they need to heal. And they’re being told, if you just change your thoughts or your beliefs that you’ll feel better, they’re, actually, being not told the truth.
And so, then they can end up feeling like I did after many years of talk therapy, “Okay, I’m a failure again.” Because the talk therapy isn’t actually helping me. I still want to go hide in the closet, and I can’t talk myself out of that. I’m still terrified to go, you know, to this place, and I can’t talk myself out of that. And so that heaps sometimes even more blame and condemnation on a person who’s trying to heal, because trauma changes not only how we think, and what we think about but it changes our ability to think. And we really need to understand that when we’re asking somebody to change their thoughts.
So, you know, I also hear women say that the abuse has ruined their life forever. They are destroyed forever, and that is heartbreaking to me. But they are not being taught the tools they need to actually heal. And so, you know, I really enjoy working with women who have been with other coaches or in other programs or read books, or even been with therapists who use a cognitive model because I can give them a whole new world to understand why they are the way they are, and give them those specific tools that work with our physiology. And so, that starts to stick us from our reactions.
People out there, coaches will say it takes 30 to 60 days to change, you know, a thought, a belief system and all that. Well, with a tool that’s working on your physiology, you can actually rewire that in sometimes minutes, or sometimes days. Well, hey, you know, I’d rather have a three day, you know, way to change my thoughts than a 60-day way, right? So, it’s so much more effective, it’s so much more empowering when you understand why you can’t change just with your thoughts. I love giving women that sense of power over their own healing.
And also, people who are not trauma-informed, who are, you know, trying to help other people, if they haven’t done their own trauma healing, they’re going to get triggered. They’re going to get exhausted by this work. And I’ve talked with other women who do this work who do feel that way. That’s not my experience. I don’t find this work exhausting or triggering because I’ve healed all that.
And so, I can offer that hope to women that they really can fully heal and just walk into their new life, and be who they want to be, and be empowered. And it’s very, very exciting to me, you know. The trauma work is the game changer. And I can go deep with them on the feeling level, and not just deal with their thoughts and offer them that safe experience where their nervous system can start saying, “Oh, I actually am safe in this world. That was a new experience.”
And I do want to mention them, the work I do is with women of faith, because the Christian church is so ignorant about abuse and trauma and just so sorely unable to represent the loving God that we see in Jesus. And women of faith go through many more levels of abuse, the spiritual abuse, when they try to talk about their abuse with the church or with their Christian friends. They’re told, you know, they just have to pray harder, they have to forgive more, and there’s just so much more that’s heaped on them, you know, so much more betrayal and pain. So, that’s the group of women that I work with.
Andrea: So, Rosanne has put together a program that helps women kind of figure out where they’re at in the practical steps of leaving. And I’m curious, how does something like that, how does a guide like that, how can that help a woman who has been experiencing covert abuse like this?
Helena Knowlton: I think the Lifeline program is wonderful. It really offers such a wonderful hand holding guided experience of going through the process of leaving. So, you know, it can help a woman facing covert abuse because if she makes the choice to leave, it will give her that guide that she does need to go through and leave.
Andrea: Yeah, one of the things that we really care about here is this idea of helping a woman find her agency, not just a woman, but anybody feel like they’re agents in their own lives. And I think that’s one of the things that I appreciate about what it does is giving a person a chance to really look at what’s going on and make clear decisions. Because I think like you were talking about before, it’s hard to think.
When you’re so confused, when you’re so overwhelmed, having a guide like that, having this additionally your kind of addressing that physiological need and the trauma and all of that. I mean, these are such wonderful resources what you guys have created, and I really hope that women who need them will find them and be able to utilize them.
Helena Knowlton: Yeah. It’s all about getting your self-leadership and self-agency back. That’s what women need because that’s exactly what’s been stolen from them through the abuse.
Andrea: Helena, where can people find you and your communities and information that you’ve shared with us today?
Helena Knowlton: My website is confusiontoclaritynow.com. And I really recommend people download the guide to get some reality about their experience and identify the tactics that are being used. Then my Facebook page is called Confusion to Clarity, and the support group is the Confusion to Clarity Support Community – it has a long name- for Survivors of Covert Psychological Abuse. And then the Arise Healing Community is at arisehealingcommunity.com. And that’s a monthly membership community. It’s a very private group.
Andrea: All right, so in closing, what would you say to someone who is trying to recover their own Voice of Influence after experiencing covert abuse?
Helena Knowlton: Well, you can probably guess what I would say. I would say, learn about how the trauma you’ve been through has shaped you and has caused you to shrink, to become quiet, to doubt yourself, to become afraid, and really, really face that. And take a deep breath and start facing how you’ve been affected and then do the work to heal. You can join Arise, if you’re a woman of faith, or find a trauma-informed, skilled therapist. I actually teach women in Arise how to find a good therapist.
Do the work, because the person you’ll be after you do the healing will naturally have her voice. Regaining your voice comes with healing. But the healing takes commitment, and it takes strength. But I’ll tell you, it took commitment and strength for you to stay with the abuser for as long as you did, so I already know you have that commitment, and I know you have that strength in you.
And it’s time to take those wonderful traits that you have and turn them towards yourself, instead of offering them to other people only. And take that strength and commitment, that bravery, that loyalty, and put that into working on yourself just as hard as you worked on trying to make your abusive marriage work. Because we worked and worked and worked and worked and worked at our marriages, we can put that same work into healing.
And then I would say if you want to really find your voice, don’t settle for just getting free from the abuse, but go for full healing, where you really know who you are. And you can be excited to get up every day because your power comes from knowing who you are, and knowing you have a place here in life that is safe and good for you.
And, you know, when you’re coming from a place of healing, you’ll be able to navigate all the sexism, all the garbage that’s coming at you. As a survivor and as a female, you’ll be able to navigate and these people who want you to just be quiet, who want to just shove this whole epidemic of abuse of, you know, women under the rug and you’ll be so solid in yourself and in what you know to be true. And you’ll be able to walk through the world knowing that you’re your own hero.
And you’ll be able to handle all the garbage that you run into when you express yourself and when you use your voice and people want you to be quiet without getting triggered by that. And then you get to just grow into a strong, beautiful, loving woman that God created you to be. And you’ll find your purpose, you’ll find your voice, and you’ll find joy again because that’s totally possible.
Andrea: Thank you so much Helena! Thank you for the work that you’re doing and for being a Voice of Influence for our listeners today. I appreciate it!
Helena Knowlton: Thank you, Andrea! It was very nice to be here and get to know you!
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